The MoU was signed during a meeting of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vietnam's General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.

The agreement focuses mainly on cooperation in the field of: regulations on nuclear safety and security; training and development of human resources; safety inspection and evaluation; incident response; and environmental radiation observation technology.

VARANS noted this is the first document of cooperation between Vietnam and China in the field of nuclear safety since the two countries signed a nuclear energy cooperation agreement in December 2000. It added, the process of negotiating and agreeing on the contents of the cooperation agreement has been carried out by the two sides since October 2004 through bilateral exchanges, meetings and exchanges at international conferences and seminars.

That agreement was "a positive sign for the establishment of cooperative relations with China in the field of peaceful use of atomic energy", VARANS said. It not only provided a basis for cooperation with VARANS, but also a precondition for cooperation between the technical assistance agency of Vietnam and China's technical assistance agencies in the field of atomic energy, it added.

In August 2014, Lightbridge Corp became the first US company to work with the VARANS following their signing of an MoU to develop the administrative, legal and regulatory infrastructure required to support Vietnam's nuclear power programme. A USA-Vietnam agreement on civil nuclear energy cooperation entered into force two months later.